Chamber and committees

I will hand over to Jamie Greene. Before I do, I know that these are really interesting topics and I am able to extend the session beyond 11:30, but I ask the Lord Advocate and Mr Harvie to make their responses as succinct as possible.

Pauline McNeill has a question before we move on to the next area of questioning.

Mr Harvie, do you want to come in on that?

Mr Harvie, would you like to come in? After that, I will have to move us on, because I am very conscious of time. I will pass over to Mr Harvie, and then I will bring in Rona Mackay to follow up on her original question, as she dropped out.

Russell Findlay wants to come back in, and then I will hand back to Jamie Greene, followed by Rona Mackay.

Good morning, and welcome to the 15th and final meeting in 2021 of the Criminal Justice Committee.

No apologies have been received this morning. I ask members and our guests to switch all mobile phones to silent and to wait for the sound engineer to switch on your microphone before speaking.

Our first item of business is the continuation of our consideration of evidence on efforts to improve the ways in which we prosecute violence against women and girls and how we support the survivors of such crimes. I refer members to papers 1 and 2.

I am pleased to welcome to today’s meeting the Rt Hon Dorothy Bain QC, the Lord Advocate, and David Harvie, the Crown Agent and chief executive of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

I will allow up to an hour and a half for this evidence session. Before we start, I will go over a few practical points. This is a fully virtual meeting, and I intend to use the chat function as the means of communicating. Therefore, if you want to come in, please type R in the chat function and I will bring you in if time allows. If we lose connection at any point with a member or a key witness, I will suspend the meeting and try to get them back into the meeting. If we cannot do so after a reasonable period of time, I will have to deem the member as not being present and we will carry on. If we lose connection with me, our deputy convener, Russell Findlay, will take over convening. If we lose him too, Rona Mackay will step in as our temporary convener with the committee’s agreement. I ask everyone to please keep their questions and answers as succinct as possible.

If that is all clear and there are no questions, we will make a start. I invite the Lord Advocate to make some brief opening remarks.

We will move on to look at the area of communication. I call Russell Findlay, to be followed by Pauline McNeill.

Mr Harvie, do you want to add something briefly?

Time is against us, as usual. We were hoping to ask some further questions about the backlog of cases, but we will follow those up in writing.

Lord Advocate, you mentioned a review that Susanne Tanner will be conducting. It will be helpful for committee members to have further details from you on that. Could you write to the committee on completion of the review with some updated information on any appropriate action that it identifies? That would be helpful.

In the meantime, Lord Advocate, I thank you and Mr Harvie for your time today. It has been most helpful. As I say, if there are any questions that we have not asked today, we will follow them up in writing.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. Our next meeting will take place on Wednesday 12 January 2022, when we expect to take oral evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans and witnesses from the Scottish Prison Service on the Prisons and Young Offenders Institutions (Scotland) Amendment Rules 2021. Further details on that meeting will be available with the agenda and papers on our website in early January.

In closing, I take this opportunity to thank all those who have given oral and written evidence to the committee in 2021. I wish all members, staff, witnesses, and members of the public a safe and happy festive season, and a happy new year.

What initiatives and programmes are available to ensure that victims’ voices are heard, and that victims are represented throughout the justice process?